William Richmond Dowd (28 February 1922 – 25 November 2008) was an American harpsichord maker and one of the most important pioneers of the historical
harpsichord
A harpsichord ( it, clavicembalo; french: clavecin; german: Cembalo; es, clavecín; pt, cravo; nl, klavecimbel; pl, klawesyn) is a musical instrument played by means of a keyboard. This activates a row of levers that turn a trigger mechanism ...
movement.
Life and career
Born in
Newark, New Jersey
Newark ( , ) is the most populous city in the U.S. state of New Jersey and the seat of Essex County and the second largest city within the New York metropolitan area.[English literature
English literature is literature written in the English language from United Kingdom, its crown dependencies, the Republic of Ireland, the United States, and the countries of the former British Empire. ''The Encyclopaedia Britannica'' defines E ...]
at
Harvard
Harvard University is a private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Founded in 1636 as Harvard College and named for its first benefactor, the Puritan clergyman John Harvard, it is the oldest institution of higher le ...
, graduating with AB in 1948. He and his friend
Frank Hubbard
Frank Twombly Hubbard (May 15, 1920 – February 25, 1976) was an American harpsichord maker, a pioneer in the revival of historical methods of harpsichord building.
Student days
Born in New York, Hubbard studied English literature at Ha ...
built a
clavichord when they were both graduate students; this led to their both deciding to abandon their intended careers as teachers of English and instead to become harpsichord builders, basing their methods on
historical principles. They separated for their apprenticeship; Dowd worked at the
Detroit
Detroit ( , ; , ) is the largest city in the U.S. state of Michigan. It is also the largest U.S. city on the United States–Canada border, and the seat of government of Wayne County. The City of Detroit had a population of 639,111 at th ...
workshop of
John Challis, who himself had learned from
Arnold Dolmetsch
Eugène Arnold Dolmetsch (24 February 1858 – 28 February 1940), was a French-born musician and instrument maker who spent much of his working life in England and established an instrument-making workshop in Haslemere, Surrey. He was a leading f ...
. At this time, Challis was the leading harpsichord builder in the United States.
In autumn 1949 Dowd and Hubbard jointly founded a workshop in
Boston, Massachusetts. In 1955, Hubbard had left on research trips around Europe, studying original instruments, while Dowd continued the new builds and restoration of antique instruments. He worked out a standard design based on the harpsichords of
Pascal Taskin
Pascal-Joseph Taskin (27 July 1723 – 9 February 1793) was a Belgium-born French harpsichord and piano maker.
Biography
Pascal Taskin, born in Theux near Liège, but worked in Paris for most of his life. Upon his arrival in Paris, he apprentice ...
, which was to become much used by professional performers.
Their joint business came to an end in 1958, and Dowd established a workshop in
Cambridge, Massachusetts
Cambridge ( ) is a city in Middlesex County, Massachusetts, United States. As part of the Boston metropolitan area, the cities population of the 2020 U.S. census was 118,403, making it the fourth most populous city in the state, behind Boston, ...
along historical lines, producing around twenty instruments a year until 1988. From 1971 to 1985, there was a workshop in Paris under his name producing a similar number of instruments, which he ran with
Reinhard von Nagel. His favoured models were two-manual harpsichords based on the French instruments of
Blanchet and Taskin, including
Ruckers
The Ruckers family (variants: Ruckaert, Ruckaerts, Rucqueer, Rueckers, Ruekaerts, Ruijkers, Rukkers, Rycardt) were harpsichord and virginal makers from the Southern Netherlands based in Antwerp in the 16th and 17th century. Their influence stretch ...
harpsichords adapted by the ''grand ravalement'' process.
Dowd's instruments have long provided the benchmark for reliability in terms of tuning and general stability, cleanliness of construction, and for the influence that they have had on succeeding generations of builders. He was the first builder to seriously consider the eighteenth-century German instruments of
Michael Mietke
Michael Mietke (c. 1656/1671 – 1719) was a German harpsichord and harp maker.
Biography
He lived his entire life in Berlin and is known to have been an instrument maker there from 1695. He succeeded Christoph Werner in 1707 as official maker t ...
(in contrast to his colleague Hubbard). His instruments were used in performance and recording by such artists as
Gustav Leonhardt
Gustav Maria Leonhardt (30 May 1928 – 16 January 2012) was a Dutch keyboardist, conductor, musicologist, teacher and editor. He was a leading figure in the historically informed performance movement to perform music on period instruments.
Leo ...
,
Isolde Ahlgrimm,
Ralph Kirkpatrick
Ralph Leonard Kirkpatrick (; June 10, 1911April 13, 1984) was an American harpsichordist and musicologist, widely known for his chronological catalog of Domenico Scarlatti's keyboard sonatas as well as for his performances and recordings.
Life ...
,
Igor Kipnis
Igor Kipnis (September 27, 1930January 23, 2002) was a German-born American harpsichordist, pianist and conductor.
Biography
The son of Metropolitan Opera bass Alexander Kipnis, he was born in Berlin, where his father was singing with the Berlin S ...
,
Bob van Asperen, and many others.
He died in Reston, Virginia, in November 2008.
Published works
*''A Classification System for Ruckers and Couchet Double Harpsichords''; in the ''Journal of the
American Musical Instrument Society'' (1978)
*''The Surviving Instruments of the Blanchet Workshop''; in ''The Historical Harpsichord: a Monograph Series in Honor of Frank Hubbard'', ed. Howard Schott (Stuyvesant, NY, 1984)
*Haney, H: ''Portrait of a Builder'', The Harpsichord, (1971–2) (about William Dowd)
Notes and references
*Howard Schott: 'Dowd, William (Richmond)', Grove Music Online ed. L. Macy (Accessed 2007-05-18), http://www.grovemusic.com/
See also
*
List of historical harpsichord makers
This page presents a graphical timelines, listing historical makers of the harpsichord and related instruments such as the virginal, spinet and clavicytherium. The makers are grouped according to which regional building tradition they belong.
Grap ...
External links
Elaine Comparone plays Scarlatti on her 2-manual harpsichord built by William Dowd in 1968.- once owned by
Ralph Kirkpatrick
Ralph Leonard Kirkpatrick (; June 10, 1911April 13, 1984) was an American harpsichordist and musicologist, widely known for his chronological catalog of Domenico Scarlatti's keyboard sonatas as well as for his performances and recordings.
Life ...
; restored by
Carey Beebe
Carey Beebe (born 1960, in Melbourne) is an Australian harpsichord maker and technician.
Early training and work
After studies at the Sydney Conservatorium where his teachers included Gordon Watson and Robert Goode, Beebe graduated with a musi ...
{{DEFAULTSORT:Dowd, William
Harpsichord makers
American musical instrument makers
Harvard College alumni
1922 births
2008 deaths
Musicians from Newark, New Jersey
20th-century American musicians